The Law on Trial: Feminism’s Challenge to Legal Tradition

Feminist jurisprudence criticizes traditional legal frameworks that profess value neutrality and universalism for being fundamentally biased towards preserving gender disadvantage. The article highlights some of the seminal themes of feminist legal theories concerning the critique of legal abstraction, limitations of the differences approach, and a stronger inequality approach. Based on the arguments of Catharine MacKinnon, Carol Gilligan, and Kimberlé Crenshaw, this paper covers the psychological, social, and intersectional foundations of gender inequality and critiques reproductive rights and efforts for feminist legal reform. By employing relational reasoning and context-sensitive legal frameworks, feminist jurisprudence opens a range of possibilities for changing the legal system to meet the demands of justice and equality. This paper contends: resolving the structures and systems of gender subjugation does not require legal reform, but a radical rethinking of the law as itself.